Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The answer is both (a) and (b) are right.

(a) The Bishop asks 'What dost thou do here ?', which is asking the purpose of Robin Hood's visit. (b) Robin Hood replies 'I am a bold harper' and promises no music until he sees the bride and bridegroom. He is not a harper: the ballad has him pretend to be one, so he pretended to be a musician.

Calling either statement wrong, or both, disagrees with those lines.

Answer: A

A wedding was going to take place in the church.

Robin Hood says 'Till the bride and the bridegroom I see', and the knight and the young woman come in. He then protests 'This is no fit match' and says 'The bride she shall choose her own dear'. A bride, a bridegroom and a match are all signs of a marriage ceremony.

A sermon, a baptism or a funeral service would have no bride and bridegroom.

Answer: B

The answer is in the church.

The Bishop is in the church where the wedding is to be held; Robin Hood says 'For since we are come into the church', which tells the reader that both of them are there. The conversation is held there before the bride arrives.

The ballad gives no churchyard, no residence of the Bishop and no market as the place of the meeting.

Answer: A

The device is a simile.

A simile compares two different things directly using 'like' or 'as'. 'Did shine like glistening gold' compares the shine of the young woman to that of gold with the word 'like'.

A metaphor makes the comparison without 'like' or 'as' ('she was gold'), personification gives human qualities to non-human things, and hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration.

Answer: D

Both (a) and (b) are right, as the key says.

(a) The stranger is described as bleeding 'from a cut in his cheek' and is calm enough to ask for a lift and apologise, so he did not seem badly hurt. (b) Bill first 'made to drive round him', that is, drove past him, and only then saw the skidded car and 'brought the Mini-Moris gradually to a stop', so the car went past the stranger and then stopped.

(b) is the weaker of the two, because the passage says Bill braked and then made to drive round, and the key treats the stop as after passing him. The options that call either statement wrong, or both, therefore do not fit the key.

Answer: A

The right statement is that there was snowfall, and a ditch along the road, so Bill was driving very carefully.

The stranger's coat is 'snow-caked', the car had skidded into 'the deep ditch', and Bill says that he braked 'though gently, or I might have followed his car into the ditch'. The conditions and his careful braking show he was driving carefully.

The statement that he was driving very slowly is not stated; he braked gently but the speed is never given. A carefree manner and feeling drowsy contradict the care he shows, and the passage never mentions that he was sleepy or that traffic was absent. Pat's remark that twelve o'clock at night is not a busy time is about the road, not about Bill's manner of driving.

Answer: C

The answer is (a) and (b) are right but (c) is wrong.

(a) Pat is bold and compassionate: she is horrified at the idea of not stopping and urges Bill to help. (b) Bill is protective of Pat and not timid: he worries about hold-ups and says 'I wasn't going to take any chance with Pat, my sister, there', but still stops. (c) is wrong: the stranger's car was not parked by the sidewalk; it 'had skidded right across the road and was hanging nose down in the deep ditch'.

The other options each call (c) right or (a) wrong, which do not match the passage.

Answer: B

Bill was travelling with his sister.

Bill says 'I wasn't going to take any chance with Pat, my sister, there', and Pat herself ends by saying 'He isn't a bad brother, really'. So Pat is his sister and she was the passenger with him.

The stranger gets into the car later and is not the travelling companion. A brother is wrong because Pat is the person with him and she is a sister, and nothing in the passage mentions a friend.

Answer: D

The statement that is not correct is that the car may not start again in the cold.

Bill's hesitation has two reasons in the passage: 'there had been one or two nasty cases of hold-up in the papers recently', so a dark spot could be a trap, and Pat, his sister, was with him and he would not take a chance with her. These are the first two statements, and 'both (1) and (2)' is also true.

Nothing is said about the cold or about his car failing to start, so the last statement is the one that is not correct.

Answer: D

We use a limited number of words in everyday conversation because we repeat a lot of words.

The last paragraph says that a person has about ten thousand words, of which only five thousand are used in everyday conversation, and 'This leads to a limited variety of words. This is because we repeat a lot of words.'

The first option contradicts the passage, which speaks of a limit. Not being a genius like Shakespeare and not being highly educated are never given as reasons.